(Contributor) Clone the Magento repository

Intended audience

The audience for this topic is anyone who contributes to the Magento Open Source codebase. You should be highly technical, understand Composer and Git commands, and be able to upgrade the Magento system software and extensions using those commands. If that isn’t you, go back and choose another starting point.

If you clone the Magento 2 GitHub repository, you cannot use the Magento software in a production environment. You cannot have a live store that accepts orders and so on.

Currently, the develop branch is the default but you can checkout a release branch like 2.1.0 after cloning.

Creating an authorization file

The Magento 2 GitHub repository requires you to authenticate. The composer install commands fails if you do not. To authenticate, generate authentication keys, after which you create an auth.json file in the home directory of the Magento file system owner.